


Hiatus

by wings128



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-18 06:18:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3559232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wings128/pseuds/wings128
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has a plan...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hiatus

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's spnspringfling challenge. Prompt - _The edge of the map._

Sam woke to the sounds of decades-old systems whirring to life and the last pieces of a plan clicking into place. First some coffee, and bacon. This definitely called for bacon. Dean would go for it and Sam could always work off the calories later.

He sat up using only his abs, long fingers mussing his hair as his feet untangled themselves from the only blanket still clinging to his sheets, instead of puddled on the floor. With any luck Dean’d sleep for a while yet.

Half an hour later and Sam was showered, shaved, and dressed in well-worn but clean denim, white cotton - no hide-the-blood-blue, today - and blue plaid. Sam tucked damp hair behind his ear and loaded two duffels, a full cooler of food, and his laptop bag into the Impala’s trunk. The heavy clunk of cool metal would, for Sam, forever signal a life on the road. The sharp smell of melting black top on humid summer air as it rushed through open windows, seventies rock blaring out the speakers, and Dean by his side. Only this trip wouldn’t be like those others. There’d be no sleeping in crappy motels for weeks on end, no greasy diner food. No King of Hell. No First Blade. 

Sam folded and laid out layer after layer of blankets across the back seat, each one smoothed of its wrinkles before the next was added. Two pillows, puffed and inviting in their white slips, stacked at the passenger end. He’d done all he could think of. Sam stretched his arms above his head, long back twisting at his narrow waist. Sighed with the pleasure of it and rolled his shoulders too. There was a lot of driving in his future before he could do that again. 

~*~

Dean lay fully-dressed in the middle of his perfectly made up bed, the purpling bruises and faint crease between his brows giving away the burden Sam’s brother carried, even in sleep.

Sam felt the pull in his thighs and the bulge in his biceps as he took his brother into his arms; knees and nape fitting to crook of elbow as if they belonged there. Dean didn’t wake as Sam carried him through the bunker’s cool corridors to the garage; a child in arms, precious cargo in need of protection.

Sam huffed a laugh at what Dean’s face would be like when he woke. Gruff and bashful beneath freckled cheeks, eyes not meeting Sam’s, until they did. Sam felt warm all over with the image. Dean had always been there for him, except - well, those paled in the grand scheme. All of it came down to now. 

This was Sam’s chance. He tucked the last blanket under Dean’s arm to stop it falling off the seat, and closed the door as quietly as he could before folding himself behind the wheel.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with the simple turn of a key, he thought with a glance at the map on the seat beside him, and clicked the remote. The garage doors swung slowly open, revealed the access ramp with its twin rows of running lights encouraging them forward. Sam shifted the Impala into first and pressed down on the gas.

~*~

“Sammy?” Dean croaked but didn’t move, the Impala’s open road purr lulling him under again before he could wake fully.

Sam eyed his brother in the rear view mirror; nothing more than dark blonde tuffs, the curve of one high cheekbone on white softness, and a mound of blankets. But it was all Sam had ever needed. Was all he’d ever need.

“I’ve got you Dean.” Sam whispered over his shoulder, before turning his attention back to the crisp blue sky and the black ribbon taking them exactly where they needed to go. “I’ve got you.”

~*~

There was a cramp clawing its way up his left calf. He was hot; sweating through day-old cotton and plaid. Light was turning his eyelids a shade of red that made no sense. And what was that? _Gulls?!_

Dean rolled, flung out a hand to keep from landing in the foot well, a tangle of blankets and biker boots. What the fuck?! _“Saaam!”_

“Easy Dean,” Dean’s sweat turned icy in relief, his heart leaping out his chest to meet the huge hand pressing back. “Easy, I’m here.”

“Where the hell, is _here_?!” Dean grumbled, exhaustion swimming up to claim him as he struggled to get upright.

It totally freaked him out that Sam had been able to move him, and drive him to… _here,_ without Dean even crackin’ an eyelid.

“It’s not the edge of the map,” Sam grinned, eyes squinting as they roved the thin cobalt line of the horizon, “but you can see it from here.”

Dean made it out of his baby, leaned heavily against her panelling and shrugged out of both jacket and plaid together; cool breeze playing in the golden hairs on his arms. Sam was there; had stepped close, pressed his Sasquatch of a body into Dean’s flank. Heavy, and solid, and everything Dean needed but had never been able to ask for.

The ocean lapped at the sand; a conversation the two of them had been having since the beginning of anything, would likely continue having until the end of forever. White-bellied Gulls squawked; swooped on the eddies of a salt-scented breeze that played in the hair of the two brothers.

“How’d you know?” Dean murmured, tilting his chin to catch more of everything; Sam’s fruity shampoo, his own stale sweat, the roar and crash of the ocean. 

He was stripping, elbowing Sam in the ribs in his panic to be bare, to be free; not noticing Sam hadn’t answered.

Dean hit the water at a run. Its enveloping waves a blissful icy caress; Sam’s ground-eating thuds filling his ears as he dived below frothing crests. Surfacing beyond the break in an explosion of liquid crystal, sunlight caught in the sparkle of wide green eyes.

“I’ll always know.” Sam gasped as a wall of water sluiced him in the face, Dean’s bark of laugher so foreign, and yet, so familiar – like a face in a cracked and faded photograph - something to be cherished.

Sam lunged in retaliation, feet slipping into a hollow, head plunging beneath the surface. But Dean was there. His strong hand on Sam’s arm, just like it’d always been. 

“I gotcha kid.”

And he did. Sam could feel Dean against him, grip shifting to Sam’s nape; shaking him, fingertips pressing at the base of his skull. The water held them, Sam slumped into Dean; relief too utterly complete to define, or express. 

“I’ve got you too, Dean.”

The mark had quieted, for the moment, soothed by distance, he guessed. A delicate pink scar instead of an angry red brand he couldn’t ignore. Dean knew, like the ocean the two of them floated in, the mark had the power to surge up; destroy all in its path.

“Yeah Sammy, you have.” Dean whispered the lie so it didn’t reach his brother.

Sam turned as if he’d heard anyway, kaleidoscope eyes reflecting blue, and full with a young brother’s mischief. “Race you!”

Dean growled, caught the tail of the wave Sam was riding onshore.

“Three outta five.” He spluttered, kneeling in the shallows of the undertow.

“It’s the ocean, Dean.” Sam grinned, puffed up with his win. “We can go as many times as we want!”

“Well then, Sammy,” Dean grinned, all white teeth, laugh lines, and five years younger. He rubbed his hand through his hair, leaving a muss of soft spikes behind. “Whatcha waitin’ for?!”

Sam barked a laugh, its sound snatched away by the wind, and watched Dean hurdle the incoming wavelets before diving under. He’d give him a head start. After all, Sam _was_ younger, and fuelled by green smoothies – not bacon cheeseburgers and snickers bars.


End file.
